We are Lincoln’s Underground Network, or LUNk Radio for short. We are a low-power AM radio station [and internet webcast*] broadcasting twenty-four hours a day from Lincoln, Nebraska. We aim to subvert government control of the airwaves by providing an ad-free alternative to the corporate radio monopoly. With an exciting mix of music and talk, we put on voices that you cannot hear anywhere else in Lincoln. If you live in Western Lincoln, tune your AM dial to 1580 and check us out. [Or turn us on anywhere, through our live webcast.*]
Radio broadcasting is controlled by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). To have a licensed station to broadcast to your community, you need to have large sums of money and weave through a massive labyrinth of red tape. These restrictions tend to favor institutions of power–corporations, churches, and government institutions. This usually disqualifies any group that would broadcast information deemed “unacceptable.” If you scrape together the money and jump through the hoops, you may be lucky enough to be granted licensure. Even then, your message is subject to censorship, in that the FCC may revoke your license or impose fines if they deem your programming “offensive” or “inappropriate.” [And all this does not even include where an ordinary person would scrape together the thousands of dollars needed to launch a licensed radio station, typically by selling ads to business and indirectly subordinating your station to the same interests as the commercial stations.]
Corporate radio broadcasters dominate the commercial FM band (92-108 FM), and the majority of low-power FM licenses go to Christian churches. Corporations dominate the airwaves (FM and AM) because broadcasting is a big business. Just like television and corporate newspapers, radio broadcasting is not a community service for them; it is a means of selling their audiences to advertisers for profit. The FCC gets a cut of these profits through their licensing fees, and exists to maintain this system.
Church radio stations easily handle the expenses of operating licensed radio stations by drawing money from their congregations. It certainly helps that their institutions do not get taxed by the government, which may also explain how the churches are rarely sources of serious dissent against government policy.
National Public Radio (NPR) and its imitators are inadequate. Though their news can be more balanced than a corporate station, they still spend too much time repeating the “spin” of state and corporate power. This is not hard to understand, considering how these stations are deliberately underfunded by the state so that they have to seek out “underwriters.” These underwriters, typically government grants and corporate backers, end up having the same influence over so-called “public” radio that the advertisers have over commercial radio.
On top of all that, NPR-type stations are geared toward a middle-aged audience. Where is the community radio station for young voices? Where can young people find interesting music that doesn’t insult our intelligence? That is why we started LUNk Radio.
LUNk Radio is part of the local, national, and global fight-back against state and corporate power. The airwaves are not owned by the government or by corporations—they belong to us! Dissent is not allowed on the corporate-controlled airwaves, and is too inadequate on the existing “alternatives.” We have no choice but to create our own alternatives. We need to build our own media networks, which will question and challenge authority.
We believe the radio airwaves can be utilized by the people for better and more diverse purposes. Radio doesn’t have to be a government-controlled and regulated propaganda machine. We can transform it into a non-hierarchical, democratic, and collectively-ran means of communication where the people can exercise their free speech and express a variety of opinions and ideas. Where radio today is used solely by corporations to bombard us with censored and biased news, we can use the power of radio to report independent news. While corporate radio means disposable pop music and annoying advertisements, we can play a mix of punk, rock, hip-hop and whatever else that doesn’t suck.
For more information, contact us at contact [at] lunkradio.org
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